Fred On Everything — Scurrilous Commentary by Fred Reed

Going Faster And Faster

The Acceleration Of Decline

One must be careful in remembering better days. Memory presents
an improving mirror, smoothing rough edges of rougher times, giving a
warm glow to things that were less roseate when they happened. Like a
good editor, it revises things for the better. Thus one recalls, or half-imagines,
the idyllic boyhood in Mississippi, the favorite grove where one played
in the slanting afternoon sunlight that probably wasn't as golden as one
recalls, with childhood companion who perhaps weren't as admirable as
they now seem. One forgets, or half forgets, the drunken parents and the
poverty and hookworm.

And so one must tread cautiously when pondering a past in which all
things were better, cleaner, and purer. Yet yet sometimes things were
better, and sometimes things do decay. Sometimes a society does go from
better to bad to worse. I wonder.

In 1964, I finished high school in King George County, Virginia. The
anomie and hopelessness of the Sixties hadn't arrived. KG was rural
and relatively poor, poor enough that a couple of dressed deer in hunting
season made a difference in the family diet. The country people worked
for a living, doing real work that involved actual effort. They farmed,
many of them, squeezing crops from the county's poor land. Many crabbed
in the Potomac, rising far before dawn to pull pots in the Potomac for
a few bushels of crabs to sell to the restaurants at Popes Creek. Life
wasn't easy. And yet .

And yet there were no drugs. At all. We in high school had never heard
of them. Today, middle schools are awash in chemical surcease. Kids
of fourteen get strung out on crystal meth, drop huge amounts of acid,
swap Ecstasy for concert tickets. We think it normal.

In 1964, we didn't lock anything -- the house, the mailbox (it didn't
lock), the car wherever we parked it, the garage. Today we lock everything.

In 1964, kids dropped their bikes in the front yard, or left them
unwatched on the bike rack at the pool. People didn't steal bikes. We
would have thought it absurd to keep a bike in the living room. Today,
my bicycle stands at the end of the sofa. The diversity has stolen three
bikes from me and a couple from my children. They cut cable locks as
a matter of course, break into storerooms, snatch-and-bolt everywhere.
This too we accept.

In 1964, pornography meant Playboy models in bikinis, Vargas
girls, lingerie ads. Now it means pore-level gynecology in macrophotography.
It means worse. Any ten-year-old with a computer, which means any ten-year-old,
can find sex with dogs, bloody sadomasochism, animals being tortured
for sport, and people defecating on each other.

In 1964, the SATs were at their peak. Teachers, being white, could
be held to standards. Ours weren't geniuses in King George, just reasonably
intelligent people who understood that their function was to impart
information. They did. Today kids graduate without being able to write
a clear sentence, lack any grasp of the language, have to count on their
fingers. Teachers, too many of them, are useless affirmative-action
hires who can't be criticized.

A few years back in a middle school in the suburbs of Washington,
I saw a poster made by a child to celebrate the contributions of Italians
to America. In huge letters it mentioned Enrico Fermi's work in, so
help me, "Nucler Physicts." And it was on the wall,, uncorrected.

Behavior? In 1964 kids were smart-asses, especially the boys, who
performed in class for the girls. Kids mouthed off, tested the limits.
But there were limits. When Larry Roller, the steely-eyed principal,
said No, it was No. There were no cops in school (the idea would have
been thought barbaric, as it is). No cops were needed. Had any of us
cursed a teacher, or threatened one, it would have been instant expulsion.
Society would have supported the verdict. Today, in many schools teachers
are afraid of the students.

In 1964, sex was rare in high school and, for most of us, nonexistent.
The girls said "no." Society backed them up. Pregnancies were few, illegitimacy
rare -- even, I think, among blacks. Now blacks are at 70% plus and
whites around 35%. We become a nation of bastards. Today early teens,
unwatched and uninstructed by parents more interested in their jobs,
rut like barnyard animals.

Boys, then as now, were immature, exploitative, horny little monsters
whose sex drives had the nuanced understatement of police sirens. The
girls, then as now, were too young for too much intimacy, emotionally
ready to be hurt by it, and in search of affection more than carnal
delights. But, because the girls said "no," and society backed them,
they didn't get hurt. The boys didn't really expect otherwise, and dated
girls because they liked them. Now girls are commodities, and cheap,
like Seven-Eleven frankfurters. The boys know that if one doesn't say
yes, another will.

I spoke recently with a young woman of twenty. She was highly intelligent,
an A student, beyond her rebellious years, neither trying to seem advanced
nor to shock. She told me, a bit sadly but with acceptance, that she
wanted children one day, but assumed she would have them without benefit
of marriage. She wasn't an angry feminist. She didn't like feminists.
She just viewed divorce as inevitable. She knew it was very painful,
especially for kids -- this in particular she knew well.

Bastardy has become a reasonable choice, not just a reflex among welfare
brood-mares.

In the Fifties, violence on television meant the Lone Ranger shooting
the gun out of Slade's hand. In 1964 it meant Paladin bloodlessly shooting
a somewhat more believable evil-doer. Today it means Hannibal Lecter
eating the brains of a living man, disembowelings in loving close-up,
and ghastly beatings.

In 1964, kids seldom stole from employers. Today, theft is accepted
and close to universal. The ingrained prejudice against dishonesty has
weakened.

On and on it goes. In the Fifties I lived a long walk away from my
present address. There was no crime. In the last couple of years there
have been two murders within three blocks of my door. Washington now
is dangerous almost everywhere, especially at night, having had in one
year more than 400 murders.

The churches are dying. Buses don't give change, as they formerly
did, because the diversity learned to rob them. Books advocating sex
with children appear, and are solemnly reviewed. Schools promote homosexuality,
expel boys for playing cowboy and Indians, discard grammar as elitist.

Thirty-five years. That is all it has taken. Half a lifetime. Things
move fast now.

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